A preliminary study of tidal current ridges

Tidal current ridges, widely distributed geomorphological phenomena over the continental shelf of the world, are studied. They are formed by tidal current and the trend of their sand bodies runs parallel to the direction of tidal current. There are two types of the plane shapes: the parallel and the fingered. Conditions of forming tidal current ridges are the velocities of tidal current ranging from 1 to 3.5 knots and the supply of abundant sediments. Tidal current ridges often develop in following morphological locations: the bays, estuaries, the mouths of channels, as well as the offshore area with strong tidal current. Tidal current ridges occur generally at a water depth of less than 35 metres. The sediments of tidal current ridges are mainly composed of sand. The grain size of the sediments is uniform and well sorted. The characteristics of grain size of the sand imply that their formation mechanism is similar to that of river sand, that is, both of them are the result of flow movements in a trongth channel controlled by boundary. There is however difference between them that the river sand is formed by one-way flow movement while the tidal current sand by two-way movement. There are two saltation populations in the log-probability curves of tidal current sand, the sorting of first saltation population is better than the second one, and having positive skewness, which differs from beach sand. In the C-M grain size pattern tidal current sand is most found in graded suspension segment. The continental shelves of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the South China Sea have favourable conditions for developing tidal current ridges in massive scale and special shape, such as the tidal current ridges in the offshore of Jiangsu, the Gulf of Korea, the shoal of Liaodong, the east and west mouths of the channel of Qiongzhou, Jiaozhou Bay, the shoal of Taiwan, Lingdingyang, the north branch of Changjiang estuary. The studies of them are of vital significance in shipping, fishing, submarine engineering, military installations, oil and gas explorations, as well as in scientific research. This paper was published in Chinese inOceanologia et Limnologia Sinica 14 (3): 286–296.